


Each Day is a Gift

by Lesca Fenix (lescafenix)



Category: Final Fantasy XIII Series
Genre: Contemplation of polyamory really, F/M, Multi, No Incest, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-16
Updated: 2015-08-16
Packaged: 2018-04-15 03:07:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4590708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lescafenix/pseuds/Lesca%20Fenix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Serah, Lightning and Snow have been given the gift of a new life after defeating Bhunivelze, but unlike the rest of the world, they're just not living it. Serah contemplates what's missing.</p><p>Prompt: <em>I would really be excited to see all the nitty gritty details of them trying to navigate a poly relationship. I have no preconceived notions of how it would happen, though it could be set in an AU post-XIII world or in XIII-2 somehow, or after Lightning Returns.</em></p><p>This is really about the "how it would happen."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Each Day is a Gift

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mako_lies (wingeddserpent)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wingeddserpent/gifts).



_Each day is a gift. Each day is a gift. Each day is a gift._

Serah found herself idly writing the words in a repetitive line in her journal. She hadn’t written anything of substance in weeks, and so it had come to this, almost a reminder that every day she wasn’t doing something with the new life they had been given, she might as well be back in the hell that was Chaos, or imprisoned in crystal.

It was remarkable how they had settled in to such lives of mediocrity in the wake of their victory over Bhunivelze. Snow had taken up building a motorcycle from parts found in the garage of the village they had woken up in. Serah always wondered how they had gotten there to begin with-likely all part of some game Bhunivelze had never got around to playing with his little pets.

Serah liked to spend her days watching the people around her as they went about building their lives. It seemed like every woman she ran into in the village was now pregnant, and the citizens of the village had already set up shops and commerce with nearby villages. Next would be a village school, where Serah would be a teacher.

It seemed like progress on the outside. Cosmetically, the world was already being changed and shaped by the hands of those who had been gifted it. Yet inside, and when Serah looked at Snow she could see it in him as well, nothing had changed. He was still stuck back in Yusnaan, haunted and paralyzed. Serah was still going through the motions of her life back in New Bodhum - waiting, and biding her time. For what?

There had been no talk of marriage. Serah wasn’t one of the women bursting with life. All she could do is think of the possibilities, of a life that could be - but when?

And then there was Lightning. Lightning, who technically lived in the small cottage next door to Serah and Snow, but was rarely ever home. Lightning, who would randomly leave the village on the first train in the morning and stay gone for months. Lightning, who wouldn’t even announce her return home until Serah noticed a light on next door while doing the dinner dishes. Whenever she and Lightning would talk, it was small talk, light. Never anything of consequence.

Never any indication of the real thoughts weighing on all of their minds. They couldn’t think about future families, or painting the cottage a different color, teaching schoolchildren, finding a career, moving forward. They were all mired in the past, caught up in nightmares that still were more real than the reality they had fallen into after the battle was won. Serah, adrift in Chaos, waiting for everything she loved to be yanked from her once more. Lightning, tense and suspicious, waiting to be conscripted into yet another battle by forces unknown. Snow, weary and broken, certain of his unworthiness and the futility of anything he did.

And so they went through the motions, built bikes, traveled, wrote, blended in with the people who were blessed with amnesia about where they had come from. For them, it was as though they had always lived on this world and in these lives. And the ones who were responsible for putting them there were adrift among them, incapable of enjoying their gift, their reward they had fought so hard to receive.

Snow and Lightning were the worst, Serah thought, almost actively working to stay frozen and miserable. Most striking of all was when they would run into each other. The day Serah had managed to corner Lightning on the front doorstep to talk about her travels and Snow had roared up on his motorcycle. The two had stared at each other with a tension that Serah could remember from her time trapped in Lumina where she had witnessed their confrontation in Yusnaan. It was taut, electric. Incredibly uncomfortable. Snow had fled into the garage and Lightning had stormed across to her cottage almost immediately to ease the tension. But the memory had remained with Serah and she kept coming back to it.

That discomfort. That tension. That dissonance. It was alive. It shattered the numbing complacency that the three of them seemed desperate to hide within, as though trying to avoid being seen by a looming enemy. That crackle of conflict - there was something there. Serah had seen it from the very first time she’d tried to introduce Snow and Lightning and it remained every time she’d seen them together. As she’d watched them journey to free her from crystal and they’d fought. It was in the haunted look in Snow’s eyes when he’d told her Lightning had come to him in a dream when he’d left to find her. It was in the way they had attacked each other in his palace in Yusnaan. It was in every drawn out silence between the two, as though each were waiting for the other to blink.

It had to be the answer. The very thing Serah avoided thinking about so she wouldn’t have to dwell on how her sister and fiance could barely be in the same room together without exploding. Rather than run from it, they had to run to it. They needed the explosion, however it would turn out. They needed to run head-first into that tension that had existed since even before Serah had been branded a l’Cie. Hold those panicked looks to see what was beyond them.

With a twist deep in her gut, Serah realized for the first time what that might be. She knew her fiance better than anyone. She knew her sister better than anyone, either. That knee-jerk emotion that had connected Lightning’s fist with Snow’s jaw on more than one occasion. The maddening drive that had made Snow continually needle and provoke Lightning. The obsessive need for Snow to search for Lightning on his own. The secretive way Lightning had reached out to Snow for help without telling Serah. The crackle of tension when their weapons and faces were pressed tightly to each other, both of them so eager to maim so as not to give vent to any other emotion.

And that moment in Snow’s chambers, where he was lost to the C’ieth, when Serah had seen through Lumina’s eyes the despair on her sister’s face, felt it in her very soul. Serah had never seen Lightning so desperate - never once through her journey. Her desperation generally came through as angry determination. But when faced with the loss of Snow, the anger had faded to sheer desperation, and Serah finally realized why.

She knew what it was like to be unable to fathom life without Snow. But Lightning’s secret was that she was unable to fathom it, too. And as much as Snow was desperate to protect Serah and keep her happy - he wanted to protect Lightning and keep her happy too. A crucial piece of the puzzle had fallen into place - how had she been so blind?

No, that was obvious, too. They both loved her, Serah knew. They would give up anything to keep her happy - including their own undisclosed desires. And so they traveled, and avoided, and went through the motions of living, all the while caught in the same hell they had lived in for the past millennia, this time held prisoner by their own confused, tormented hearts.

 _Each day is a gift_ , Serah returned to her doodle in her notebook, smiling determinedly as she slammed it shut. This was a new world, and that meant a new way to live. A new way to love. Love wasn’t something to be hoarded or kept for one lucky person. All Serah had ever wanted was to have her fiance and her sister. If she could have them both, and they could have each other as well - wouldn't that be the greatest gift of all? And it had been there, waiting for them, all along.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is more of a contemplation of how a poly relationship between Serah, Snow and Lightning would come about. It turned into something so much bigger than what it originally intended to be, and has spawned a sequel where Serah puts her plan into motion. I'm sorry I couldn't finish that in time for this challenge, but please be on the lookout for it!


End file.
